


Longitude and Latitude

by lara_aine



Category: Pundit RPF (US)
Genre: F/F, M/M, Pundit Kink Meme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-11
Updated: 2009-02-11
Packaged: 2017-10-19 05:21:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/197343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lara_aine/pseuds/lara_aine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Keith had imagined she would be one of those women who hardly looked pregnant at all, a tiny bump, visible only from a sidelong glance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Longitude and Latitude

_“It’s just there are certain things you’re sure of... like longitude and latitude.” – Sam, The West Wing_

 

It had never been something Keith had given much consideration to. With no biological deadline, no ticking urgency, it was never a conscious decision. Circumstance, age, the somewhat serious relationship that seemed to coincide with being on the wrong side of fifty, all rendered the likelihood of a family pretty improbable. It was neither planned nor regretted, just the way things turned out.

And maybe he shrugged it off too quickly but when Rachel asked him for help, he couldn’t think of a good enough reason to say no. Her and Susan wanted a baby, had been thinking about it for a long time: fostering, adoption, IVF, but it was Rachel’s only chance to be pregnant and she wanted the experience. Frozen, anonymous sperm freaked her out, too clinical, too sanitized, like a creepy science experiment. A person half-unknowable. She had seen Alien, she said, and there was a 50/50 chance she could end up pregnant with half a Republican.

They laughed about it but he knew as well as she the reasons he topped her list. Older, relatively unattached, unsentimental. He was intelligent, passionate, articulate, reasonably healthy and thoroughly uncomplicated. He wouldn’t be overly involved nor cause a fuss. There would be no obligations. It would be just like he doted on his niece and nephew, in a generous distant sort of way.

The process itself was understated and casual. A text message, a plastic jar with a screw top lid, handed over like some clandestine drug deal on the steps of the subway stop in front of her apartment. It was winter, an icy January. She shivered where she stood, in her oversized shirt and bright sneakers, and no overcoat.  
“Thank you Keith”, she said, blushing, the red tinge of embarrassment even as she tried to be arch.  
He had made a joke to ease the tension from a moment that felt it ought to be significant but really wasn’t. Rachel smiled and looked over her shoulder.  
“I had better…”  
“Go! Just don’t tell me about it.” He shook his head and kissed her awkwardly on the cheek before taking the steps back down to the subway.

The confirmation, a few weeks later, that it had worked was equally unexciting. He was the shortest distance between two points.

He didn’t tell Anderson until she was three months gone. The day of her first sonogram; ten minutes from air she had shown him the grainy print. During the breaks, he had struggled find substance among the light and dark, sound waves that shatter into forms and shapes. She smiled when he gave it back to her, eyes creased, a kind of tempered giddiness in the way her fingers danced around the edge of the paper. He thought her face had become a little rounder but it might have been a trick of the lights.

To Anderson, he mentioned it in passing, in the middle of dinner that evening, casually, because Keith’s involvement in it was a trivial addendum. Anderson stared at him, wordless, fork frozen midway to his mouth. He said nothing, but Anderson was always a bit funny about fathers and sons.

The months rolled away, the hot sticky swell of summer like compass points to the changes of Rachel’s abdomen. By August she was all breasts and belly heavy. Keith had imagined she would be one of those women who hardly looked pregnant at all, a tiny bump, visible only from a sidelong glance. Instead, every part of her was expecting. Heavier, rounder, there was a kind of earthiness to her that he never expected to see, much less find attractive. The heat made her weary and sluggish. Three times he found her asleep on the couch in her office, hand resting on the curve of her hip, the sleeveless shirts she had taken to wearing, rouched up to her breasts. The underside of her belly was dark, skin stretched taut, her linea nigra like an equator to anchor their child.  
She said the heat made her crazy. It made Keith’s mouth dry.

Towards the end, Susan hauled her back to Massachusetts, mostly to put an end to Rachel’s constant fretting over the state of her show despite the perfectly adequate replacement. When the baby came, there was an email and a phone call, and Anderson bought a gift and Keith signed the card from both of them.

It was possibly only then that the true absurdity of the situation hit him. Because till then, the child had been a mere idea, a possibility, a journey undertaken with no destination reached. He had no clue what to write, the possessive pronouns confused him entirely. Ours, yours? Susan sent a photograph to his blackberry, the shiny new family, only three hours old, albeit with Keith’s nose and chin.

Anderson bought a ludicrously expensive bottle of scotch, to ‘wet the baby’s head’ he said, crashing into his apartment, tag teaming with Kathy, all bright and batshit crazy. The drink didn’t last long, the Sambuca that followed it, even less.  
“Oh my God Anderson, they’re fucking Deep Throats, you should be better at this,” she scoffed as Anderson’s shaky hands attempted to put Bailey’s heads on their shots. “Seriously Keith, you’re better off out of it, two dykes for parents. You couldn’t take him anywhere.”  
Their laughter was loud and raucous, a kind of hysteria that only sets in at three in the morning when your heart’s worn out.

***

It’s another icy January when Rachel returns to work. The same Rachel he knew, sharp and funny, but closed off to him. She’s a secret keeper for somebody else. She keeps theirs though, like a quiet, private, intimacy. The only thing they share.

There’s a political sex-scandal, and more elections and a civil war in somewhere Keith has never heard of until Anderson decamps there for three weeks. Mere pinpoints on a map, the world keeps turning even as Keith’s axis tilts.

Keith knows he has an ego, is quick to temper, embarrassment and feelings of inadequacy often buried beneath bluster. But amongst those he loves, he’s equally quick to admit he has erred. He’s good at apologizing, or rather he’s gotten better at it. He tries to learn from his mistakes.

But there is one regret he will never voice, though it plays over and over in his head when he can’t sleep, like a broken tape against the white noise of Anderson’s snoring. In the still of the night, he wishes his son away.


End file.
